Baseball is a game of individual skills played in a team environment.  Baseball players must play both offense and defense and individual skills on both sides differentiate the average player from the exceptional.  Top-level players continue to develop and improve their skills throughout their careers.  Pitchers are continually learning new pitches.  Players continuously work to improve defensive skills and enhance hitting skills.  Top players are involved in year-round conditioning today that enhance strength, flexibility, and endurance.  Players that fail to improve typically have very short careers.

With baseball as our model, individual skills enhancement is important for us, as well.  Even the best employee can become mediocre if he/she fails to enhance skills over time.  Times change; technology changes; we must change and improve, too.  I was in a Best Buy electronics store a few days ago.  There was one entire section with no products at all… the camcorder section.  It was still labeled, but no products were on display.  The evolution of the camcorder is a great example on how things can change and how we can become obsolete if we do not enhance our skills.  I remember buying our first camcorder.  It was a large, heavy item so large and bulky that it required a shoulder bag to hold it.  However, it did take decent videos of school concerts, soccer games, birthday parties, and vacations.  The camcorder evolved over time to smaller and smaller units.  And, their price decreased by around 70 – 90% over a period of 20 years or so.  Within the last couple of years, a camcorder could be purchased for a couple hundred dollars that was the size of a small camera.  The quality of videos was terrific.  However, Best Buy didn’t have any of these when I visited the other day.  People have replaced camcorders with their smart phones.  The ability to use a smart phone to create videos is almost a free add-on for phones today.  Why buy and use a separate camcorder when you have a perfectly suitable one in your pocket?  Camcorders have come and gone within my adult lifetime!  They are obsolete!

We can become obsolete if we do not evolve.  We must continually work to enhance our skills.  We need to become more flexible.  We need to become experts in not just one area, but in several areas.  Just like the major league pitcher striving to learn a new pitch, we must be continually refining and expanding our abilities.  The better we become, the more value we add to our patients and our company.

I hope you each hit a home run today!  And, don’t be a camcorder!